Beyond Our Dreams

Watching out the window, my heart nearly stopped! The man pulled out a black revolver from his belt, and taking hold of the gate, called Acerquese, senor. (Come closer, Mr.) By then I was running for the front door. I had to go around a corner, and nearly slipped on the tile floor. I opened the door and stepped to the edge of the porch, said in an urgent whisper, Come in quick! He has a gun! Ken whispered back, I know. He had heard the click when the man cocked it. Ken was backing up but still talking to the guy. When he got to the porch, I had the door open and we both dashed in, locking the door behind us. I had seen him grab the gate as if he were climbing over. It was just one of the alarming experiences of their mission life. But God was teaching them faith in His promises for protection and guidance. They needed it in their life as missionaries, but even more during the 25 years in founding and directing the program of International Children's Care that proved to go way Beyond Their Dreams. About the author: Since Alcyon chose to marry a young Theology student, and become a pastor's wife and missionary, she had to forgo her desire of a college education. God loves to give good gifts to His children, and the unbelievable gift to her was an Honorary Doctorate by Walla Walla College in 2002.

Mel Tomlinson's fascinating true story starts before his birth at his family's home in the Chavis Heights Housing Project in Raleigh, NC. It starts with the struggles of his parents and grandparents in Jim Crow-era North Carolina and continues with his unexpected and meteoric rise through the ranks of the professional ballet world with almost no prior dance training. After years spent as a soloist and principal dancer in some of America's top professional ballet companies, Mel fi nds himself placed in the House of Mercy AIDS Hospice in Belmont, NC, where his friends and family expect him to soon die a hideously painful death. But it seems that powers beyond his dreams had other plans for Mel Tomlinson, the once captivating, charismatic dancer.

Volume 2.

Hamad and Shad were two brothers who fled the war-torn region of North Waziristan near Pak-Afghan border. The elder brother took a dangerous sea journey that ended in the Christmas Island detention centre in Australia. The younger brother with his extreme views reached a moderate business family living in the southern city of Karachi. The family member Rub and his business partner Fazal were close friends, but a dramatic scene emerged when they were trapped in a scam knitted by their business rival. Hamad explored a treasure of books in the house that brought him into direct conflict with his extreme views and led to a heinous plot. The grandfather of Rub was Hamad’s mentor, but the revelation of a secret in the grandfather’s life opened a Pandora’s box of love and hate with a high risk of identity theft and fraud. Hamad’s brother Shad met Badar in Australia. He listened to his story. Badar grew up in a lavish Indian mansion but was curious about his hated Pakistani father who disappeared after a few years of marriage with his mother in Sydney. Many other characters sneak in that stretched the story from Mansehra to Java, Sydney, America, Bangkok, Karachi, Lucknow and Jhansi. Each character appears with dreams. The combination of all set the landscape for an unfolding of social and political drama titled as Beyond the Dreams.

When Peter Marmureanu started learning tennis in communist-held Romania, he was ten years old, playing barefoot on clay courts, swinging a wooden paddle that served as a racket. Eight years later, as a member of Romanias Davis Cup team, Marmureanu was traveling side by side with Ilie Nastase and Ion Tiriac to the worlds capitals playing tournaments in Cairo, Monte Carlo, Paris, London, Moscow, and scores of other cities. In Beyond My Dreams, Marmureanu recounts his life story and how he was forced to become a designated courier for the Securitate, traveling with packets of top-secret documents concealed in his racket cover for delivery to Romanian embassies. In a last-minute flight to freedom that sounds like an espionage thriller, Marmureanu narrates how he made his escape. But even in America, where Donald Rumsfeld and President Gerald Ford helped secure his citizenship, he lived for many years under FBI protection, carrying a handgun for his own safety, knowing the danger that loomed over Romanias defectors and what might happen if he ever went back. And yet, for the sake of his family, Marmureanu risked a returnwitnessing, firsthand, the initial moments of insurrection preceding the fall of an evil regime. In this memoirfilled with intrigue, courage, and defianceMarmureanu tells how he escaped one of the most repressive regimes on earththe incredible but true adventure of one mans flight to freedom.

An “invaluable” memoir by a counselor who left the elite private-school world to help poor and working-class kids get into college (Washington Monthly). Winner of the Studs and Ida Terkel Award Joshua Steckel left an elite Manhattan school to serve as the first-ever college guidance counselor at a Brooklyn public high school—and has helped hundreds of disadvantaged kids gain acceptance. But getting in is only one part of the drama. This riveting work of narrative nonfiction follows the lives of ten of Josh’s students as they navigate the vast, obstacle-ridden landscape of college in America, where students for whom the stakes of education are highest find unequal access and inadequate support. Among the students we meet are Mike, who writes his essays from a homeless shelter and is torn between his longing to get away to an idyllic campus and his fear of leaving his family in desperate circumstances; Santiago, a talented, motivated, and undocumented student, who battles bureaucracy and low expectations as he seeks a life outside the low-wage world of manual labor; and Ashley, who pursues her ambition to become a doctor with almost superhuman drive—but then forges a path that challenges received wisdom about the value of an elite liberal arts education. At a time when the idea of “college for all” is hotly debated, this book uncovers, in heartrending detail, the ways the American education system fails in its promise as a ladder to opportunity—yet provides hope in its portrayal of the intelligence, resilience, and everyday heroics of young people whose potential is too often ignored. “A profound examination of the obstacles faced by low-income students . . . and the kinds of reforms needed to make higher education and the upward mobility it promises more accessible.” —Booklist